The Lost Lessons of World War I

A combination of willful blindness, utter complacency, and intense stubbornness on the part of Europe’s leaders subjected their countries to two devastating wars in the twentieth century. With nationalism and populism once again flourishing across the West, the risk of another large-scale conflagration is rising fast.

PARIS – It has been 100 years since World War I ended, and the centenary was commemorated this month with great pomp in Australia, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom. Germany sent high-level authorities to France to mark the occasion, reaffirming the reconciliation between the two countries. But the fact that Franco-German reconciliation did not occur until Europe had suffered another devastating war demonstrates how fragile peace can be, especially when political leaders are as shortsighted as they often are.

The Cambridge historian Christopher Clark aptly titled his 2012 book on the origins of WWI The Sleepwalkers. Through a combination of willful blindness, utter complacency, and intense stubbornness, Europe’s leaders subjected their countries to a conflict that shattered an entire generation.

By the time WWI erupted, it should have been clear that industrialization and the transportation revolution had transformed warfare. The Crimean War of 1853-1856 had over one million casualties; the American Civil War of 1861-1865 resulted in over 600,000 deaths.

We all have learnt from the horrors of both World Wars. Conducting a war to-day is a very bloody and costly affair, while too often goals are not accomplished.Looking back on European history I cannot be but surprised how little the French elite has learnt from history.

For at least two centuries France and Germany were main players in almost all European wars.They did not only fight each other but also spread their aggression all over Europe, and even the World, in a, unbound desire to built an empire.Some wise men founded after WW2 the NATO, the EU and other International Institutions. The Americans contributed by staying involved in Europe. Altogether it lead to 74 years of peace and prosperity.Germany has gotten the message and has abandoned the idea of an empire and tries to operate within the EU.The French elite however keeps trying to build an EU empire, in which they assume France will have a leading role.The French are nice and peaceful people, I go there on vacation, but it is their elite who raises these imperialistic ideas.They use the EU as an instrument to replace the empire they lost.- Mitterand wanted the Euro, so he would be able to control Germany.- Macron wants a Transfer Union so he can plunder other EU members.- Macron does not want EU members to be sovereign, but he wants the EU to be integrated into a bloc ( Federation). A Federation that must be sovereign, independent from the US.- The EU is Union of 27 members. Macron tries to promote the Franco-German axis. This meaning he wants privatly to strike deals with Germany. He thereby excludes the other 25 members and is undermining the EU.- Despite the French revolution, the Elite has not learnt to communicate with their people. That is why they have so many laborstrikes. They do not listen to a dissatisfied citizen, but just label him/her populist ( like an inheretic).This has economic consequences. On the Global Competitiveness Index France ranks only 22 (Germany 4 ).- It is ironic that Macron held his speech on the end of WW1 with the Arc de Triumph in the background. The Arc honors the battle of Austerlitz, which Napoleon won, while he was on one of his bloody looting trips in Europe.

The days of building imperiums are over. In a world with expanding countries France is just a medium power. In the EU it comprises 15 % of the EU population. In the Eurozone France has 22 % of the Gross National Income.

As long as the French elite are unwilling to face reality and refuse to focus on building a Union of 27 members, France will hinder the development of a strong EU. That will be a Confederate EU, whereby the identity and interests of all members are duly respected.

Dominique Moisi names “a combination of willful blindness, utter complacency, and intense stubbornness” attributed to Europe’s nationalistic leaders for the sufferings and devastation that the First World War inflicted upon an entire generation and the whole of Europe. Failing to learn the lesson they started to sow the seeds for the Second World War with the Treaty of Versailles. The author says it took two destructive wars for the rest of the 20th century to come to terms with its belligerent past and to bring peace to Europe. He fears that the “flourishing” nationalism and populism across the West, could increase “the risk of another large-scale conflagration,” posing a threat to the seven decades of lasting peace and stability. Since 1957 the European Project had brought peace, democracy and solidarity to the Continent. The First World War was supposed to end war, a necessary response to aggression by a xenophobic and anti-democratic expansionist power - Germany. But it became a vast depraved undertaking of unprecedented savagery: 16 million died. Europe’s ruling classes dispatched their soldiers to a senseless slaughter in the struggle for imperial supremacy. Lenin summed it up to the Romanian poet Valeriu Marcu in early 1917: "One slaveowner, Germany, is fighting another slaveowner, England, for a fairer distribution of the slaves".It was not a war of self-defence, nor liberation from tyranny. As the late Eric Hobsbawm set out in his 1987 book, “Age of Empire”, it was a clash of empires - an escalating struggle for colonial possessions, markets, resources and industrial strength between the dominant European powers, Britain and France, and the rising imperial Germany seeking its place in the sun. The war left a Europe utterly transformed, but which went to war a generation later, with even greater loss of life. The year 1918 radically reshaped the map of Central and Eastern Europe. Several new states (or ones recreated after a century) emerged in the place of three powerful empires – Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. The new countries were poor, in conflict with each other and meticulously divided by borders and customs duties. It was the era of triumphant nationalism. In September 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire reached out to Western powers for a ceasefire. The US, by then the world’s most powerful country and one untouched by the war, replied that its stance had been presented by President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points proposal. Apart from transparent international agreements, unfettered access to the seas and the lifting of trade barriers, Wilson talked about new borders in Europe based on ethnicity. As it would later turn out at the Versailles conference in 1919, his postulate of "borders based on ethnicity" would prove to be the precursor to many conflicts. In central Europe, countries often lived side by side with each other and claimed ownership of the same territories. Each resolution passed by the big powers triggered diplomatic protests and often armed conflict. The League of Nations – the world's first international organisation seeking to play a peace-keeping role - was shortlived, and it would take another world war for the United Nations, to be born.The author points out that “WWII accomplished what even WWI could not: it ended the era of European global dominance. While Europe has grown and prospered since 1945, it has not regained the global leadership status its major countries once possessed. This leaves today’s European Union at the mercy of a US that has rejected multilateralism and embraced nationalism.” If history is anything to go by, the lesson from the two world wars shows that “hard nationalism naturally leads to conflict.”Hence European leaders and their citizens ought to look beyond their national interests for the sake of peace and stability for the entire region. Without the constant reminder of the past, “the risk today is that generations that have not known war will reproduce the chain of events that lead to it.” It requires all of us to be vigilant and not to sleepwalk into a conflict, that ultimately triggers uncontrollable spillover effects. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, in June 1914 started World War I.

New Comment

Pin comment to this paragraph

After posting your comment, you’ll have a ten-minute window to make any edits. Please note that we moderate comments to ensure the conversation remains topically relevant. We appreciate well-informed comments and welcome your criticism and insight. Please be civil and avoid name-calling and ad hominem remarks.

Log in/Register

Please log in or register to continue. Registration is free and requires only your email address.

Log in

Register

Emailrequired

PasswordrequiredRemember me?

Please enter your email address and click on the reset-password button. If your email exists in our system, we'll send you an email with a link to reset your password. Please note that the link will expire twenty-four hours after the email is sent. If you can't find this email, please check your spam folder.